


Revelations

by coffee_mage



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: A sort of coda to Spectre, Bond and Q need psychiatric help, Bond is messed up period, Bond/Q if you squint and the rest of the series will be Bond/Q, Explicit Torture, Gen, I'm not even screwing around, Lots of torture, M/M, PTSD, Q is messed up after Austria, Read the author's notes for trigger warnings, So much torture, The author probably needs psychiatric help if this is what came from the author's brain, Torture, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:38:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_mage/pseuds/coffee_mage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The women never stay because Bond is good for exactly one thing--causing pain. Q thinks he knows this.  Bond teaches him the truth of it.</p><p>A coda to Spectre, of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelations

**Author's Note:**

> I am, as an author, seriously, seriously not messing around when I say that this is a story about torture. Trigger warnings abound for messed up decision making due to PTSD, frank discussion of someone being brain damaged in an airplane, very explicit torture including drugging someone repeatedly and carving them with a razor.
> 
> This isn't just a story about torture, though, it's a story of Bond's manpain and if that bothers you, well, this story will too.
> 
> There's no happy ending here, none at all. Q and Bond don't get together at the end and the torture is not sexual. This is not BDSM porn, this is torture, pure and simple.

She’d made her position very clear upon their first meeting—she was done with the kind of life that required her to look over her shoulder constantly—and she’d made it even more clear on the train—she hated guns. His life is certainly never going to be bereft of either of those things and three weeks is all it takes for the adrenaline and shock to have worn off completely and Madeline to have realized that, with her father’s allies and enemies dead or in prison, her life could be, so long as she leaves him. He thinks that it might have lasted a little longer, days at most, but longer, if he hadn’t cleaned his gun in the bed while he thought she was sound asleep after a particularly ecstatic lovemaking session.  
  
He is nothing, though, if not terrible at relationships and he did that and she shouted and he shouted back—he has never been good at backing down from confrontation—and then she put her clothes on and walked out of his life. He went out and bought liquor, came back to the hotel where they had been hiding, where she had refused to hide and he’d been so happy hiding, and started drinking. It’s been three days and the only reason he’s stopped is because he fell asleep, finally.  
  
The hangover is terrific and the tapping on the door, light, brisk and businesslike, is magnified by the throbbing pulsation of his headache. He considers his gun, for a moment, trying to decide whether he should just shoot the door and scare off whoever is out there or if he should go and deal with them himself. In the end, the idea of a gunshot makes his head give an uncomfortable lurch that drags his stomach along with it and he picks himself and his gun up to go scare away whomever has decided he ought to be disturbed. He both desperately hopes that it’s not someone here to kill him—he’s in no shape to fight—and that it is someone here to kill him—he’s in no shape to fight—as he unsteadily places his gun against the door at chest height to open it a crack and see who’s there.  
  
He is greeted by a fist, raised to knock again, and a very nervous, very familiar face. He steps back, frowns, then opens the door to let in his quartermaster. The man is wearing a truly horrible cardigan and clutching a rather large leather briefcase in a white-knuckled grip that leaves Bond wondering who Q is running from.  
Q’s nerves do not seem to have been calmed by stepping out of the hallway at all and glancing over his surroundings, which happen to include James Bond wearing nothing but his pants. He takes that in, looking simultaneously unimpressed and unnerved. “Put a robe on, 007,” he finally says, his voice steadier than Bond expects with how twitchy he appears. “This is a matter of global security and I won’t be discussing it with a naked man.”  
  
Bond steps over to the closet to get the robe. “Flying twice in two months, just to speak to me? One might think you were developing an attachment.”  
  
“Last time, there was a rather tight deadline that left me with no choice in the matter. This time, I took the train. I know it’s a terribly recent innovation, but perhaps you read about the tunnel they dug under the channel?” Q seems to calm slightly as he mocks the agent, falling easily into the patterns they’ve followed at nearly every meeting since their first.  
  
“Hmmm, yes, I seem to recall reading that. I suppose you would have to look at archives if you’d ever wanted to read the news articles from those days.”  
  
“Actually, I kept clippings while they built it. I could have done it in half the time, with half the budget, barring the type of disaster that tends to accompany several of our double-o agents.”  
  
Bond shrugs, setting his gun down on a nearby table and crossing his arms. “You say disaster, I say protection of Queen and country.”  
  
The nervousness flits back into existence on Q’s face. “Ah, yes, we should discuss that.” He sets his briefcase down and settles his thumbs against two thumb pads and twitches his thumbs lightly until the locks pop open. “Combination of carefully timed morse code as a password and biometrics,” he says as he opens the case and turns it. “Much more secure than the older biometric locks, but not practical for firearms, unfortunately.”  
  
The case contains several small bottles, something the shape of a knife but certainly not a knife, a straight razor, small objects that might be clamps of some kind and something that looks rather like a cigarette lighter. Bond has never been handed such an eclectic set of devices from Q-Branch and he frowns at Q. “Strange toys.”  
  
Q flinches slightly at that in a way that seems personal. “Not toys, 007,” he says, tone carefully steady now. “Instruments of torture.”  
  
That gets Bond’s full attention, even through the headache and tightness in his eyes. “Torture?”  
  
Q picks up the not-knife. “This emits electrical interference of a non-burning type that convinces the flesh it’s pressed against that it’s being penetrated by a knife. It leaves absolutely no wound, but pressing it against flesh for longer periods of time convinces the nerves that the knife is sliding deeper. Quick impacts are relatively painless, a flaw I didn’t have the stomach to correct.” Q usually sounds proud of his creations. This one makes him sound slightly sick.  
  
Bond takes it from him, frowning in concern. He hasn’t the time to ask, though, what he’s meant to do with it before Q picks up the bottles. “I’m sure you can determine the use of the razor when I tell you that these contain drugs to confuse a victim, acids, bases and salt,” he says, setting each down as he proclaims its contents. He holds the last between thumb and forefinger, his displeasure clear. “This one intensifies sensation to the point of making the skin feel raw just by touching it.”  
  
Bond is beginning to have a bad feeling about what he’s going to be asked to do on this mission. He has tortured others in the past. There is always a small part of him that feels satisfaction when he finishes the job properly, though. Torture should have an end point for all but the very most depraved. He has a license to kill and sometimes that’s the only mercy he has left in him. While he could certainly kill someone with a razor blade, it is rapidly becoming clear to him that the entire point of this mission is torture, non-lethal torture, and he begins to worry that he may not be allowed to use his license at the end of this mission.  
  
Q then picks up the cigarette lighter. “This works similarly to the knife, only it activates the nerve endings that perceive heat. You can burn someone alive without ever needing to leave a mark on their flesh. I couldn’t simulate the scent as it would have drawn attention, but the sensation should be enough. You can control the width of the activation with this switch. Hold it against the skin and slide it back and it will cover more area.” He sets the lighter down uneasily, swallowing sickly.  
  
“And what are those?” Bond asks, pointing at the clamps.  
  
“Clamp it down on a finger, toe or other small bone that’s near the surface of the skin and it emits a wave at a frequency that induces bone pain, much like a break.” There’s no cockiness or pride whatsoever left in Q’s voice or expression. There is only fear, nervousness and upset.  
  
Bond finds that he does not like this. It is making him nervous and he does not, in fact, like being nervous. It’s a foreign emotion for a man who has no shame and who kills mercilessly. “The target?” he asks, something unnerving and ugly settling into his stomach.  
  
“Ah.” Q pushes his glasses up his nose, then clasps his hands lightly in front of himself, his shoulders tensing and all motion falling out of his body as if the gears were all winding down in a mechanical toy. “The target is known to you. Will this be a problem?”  
  
There’s something in the stillness and the careful syllables falling out of Q’s mouth that sets alarm bells ringing in a way that Bond has very rarely experienced in his life. He can think of only one other instance and that instance had left M, his M, dead. “That depends on the identity of the target,” Bond says, giving Q a challenging look. He will commit to nothing until the alarm bells have been silenced.  
  
“If all goes according to plan, you will never know the true identity of your target, 007.” The stillness remains in Q, the changing dilation of his pupils the only motion outside of barely perceptible breaths.  
  
“With these tools, I believe I could get any information I needed, up to and including the identity of my target. Who is it?”  
  
Q’s eyes flick to the left, then the right, though he does an admirable job of keeping still otherwise. It’s clear to Bond that Q is very nearly ready to piss himself in fear and doing his level best to hide that. It would be clear to anyone who had spent more than a handful of brief moments observing the quartermaster, but it seems to Bond that allowing him the dignity of believing otherwise is the best idea. “Matthew Hunter.”  
  
That’s a lie. James can feel it in his bones, see it in the careful way that Q’s mouth forms the name, as if it’s a code and not a real thing. It feels like the name of something Q’s built and lost the battle to name himself, something only he knows the true name of, but wishes he could share. For a moment, he wonders, given the first initial, if it’s M, the new M, but then it hits him like a sledgehammer to the brain, every alarm bell and instinct he has going off at once and telling him that this is wrong. “That’s not your name,” he says boredly.  
  
Q startles, the movement large against the stillness of his body. “No, it’s a cover,” he admits, nervously.  
  
“Your cover.”  
  
“Yes.” Q shifts his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, his terror making itself more evident as though naming himself has released something inside of him.  
  
A thousand questions run through Bond’s mind, all the questions he’d normally have written into the file, but he has a feeling there’s no file. He has a feeling there’s nothing. “Is this sanctioned?” he asks, finally.  
  
“Not precisely,” Q says.  
  
“Not at all, more like. I’m hardly going to be responsible for damaging one of MI6’s greatest assets. Despite what you may think from my equipment track record, I do not actually attempt to make MI6 pay anything they can’t afford.”  
  
“MI6 can’t afford for you not to do this,” Q says, a bit of the arrogance that usually carries him through anxiety creeping back into his voice. “I’ve run the numbers and the simulations and there is no version of events that has both me alive and MI6 intact, in the long run.”  
  
“Have you spoken to Psych?” There’s a sneer there that Bond cannot actually keep out of his voice. Psych are all morons who don’t understand the repercussions of doing his job, who are just looking to keep him still and he can’t stay still, he falls apart if he has to stay still for long. That being said, however, they have a use for some people and Q seems like the type to have a pathology they can actually fix.  
  
“I’ve spent the past three weeks doing little else, well, aside from building. I’d already taken the torture resistance classes, of course, they’re mandatory, but nothing that Psych can offer will prove with any accuracy that I won’t just crumple under the pressure and give in to torture.”  
  
“The best way to resist torture is to avoid it in the first place,” Bond says, very seriously. He needs water and painkillers and more sleep, not a terrified man who’s built the instruments of his own destruction. “Make sure you can’t be caught.”  
  
“I am well aware of this,” Q says in a haughty tone, rage flashing in his eyes for just long enough to chase the fear out of his voice for a moment. “I’ve erased all records of my previous identity, moved house and fitted my cats with behavioural trackers that will help tell me if anyone gets past my security and into my home. I’ve even gone so far as to dispatch people to my primary school to destroy the paper records. The person who became MI6’s quartermaster no longer exists. Whatever family I may or may not have is now as safe as it is feasibly possible to make them and MI6’s records of me have been vastly reduced. In short, I have disappeared from everything I possibly can, and yet that does not change that there were those who saw me and chased me in Austria and we cannot guarantee that not one of them escaped with their life.”  
  
“Subjecting yourself to my tender mercies won’t prevent them finding you again,” Bond says, with a strange twinge he thinks must be something like empathy.  
  
“The odds of them, or someone like them, finding me again or in the first place increase exponentially the longer I stay with MI6. Eventually, I will be found and caught, if not by those individuals then by someone else.”  
  
“Then leave MI6.”  
  
“That will not, in fact, help in the slightest,” Q says. “I’ve had my hands in every part of MI6 as well as the security and intelligence organizations running virtually every other major world power. I have seen and built things that are so classified that you will hopefully never know they exist, let alone what they are. The world powers I haven’t assisted, I could break into with little more than a thought. I wasn’t kidding when I said I could do more damage than you in my pyjamas, without any caffeine.”  
  
“What will my torturing you accomplish?” Bond asked. “If leaving MI6 wouldn’t help, what will this actually do?”  
“It will let me know if I need to outfit myself with a dental poison capsule. They come with a great deal of risk in a great many situations, as I am certain you know, but if I am susceptible to torture, then I will require one. If I am susceptible to torture, as I suspect, given the severity of my fear response in Austria, that I am, then I am too dangerous to live through a kidnapping.”  
  
“It isn’t so simple to make that call,” Bond responds, his stomach twisting a little. This is too much thought and discussion on too little sleep and too much alcohol. “That’s a final decision, the last you’ll ever make and it would be made in a moment of stress that would leave you unable to think clearly. If you’re susceptible to torture, then you require more security, not a suicide pill.”  
  
Q fixes him with a long, sad look. “You and I both know that there is no amount of security that can ever completely prevent the forces we fight from reaching an individual if they have determined that they must.”  
Bond tenses, because yes, he knows that intimately. He knows that like he knows his own name or the feeling of his hands around a man’s throat. “Even if I gave in to your ridiculous whims and tortured you, you asked for it, it would never be the same as actual torture because you’d know I wasn’t going to kill you and that everything I was doing was non-lethal. It would change everything. It wouldn’t be real.”  
  
“You don’t take a job with MI6 and fear for your own life,” Q says simply. “I know that every breath I’ve drawn since I was tapped to rise in Q-branch has been borrowed time. I am going to be killed before I have a chance to grow old, possibly by someone the double-ohs fail to kill, possibly by an accident with one of my own inventions. Moneypenny knows what is to become of my cats when that happens.”  
  
“You fear for your life or you wouldn’t be here. After all, you have one of the most common fears of those with an overblown fear of mortality.”  
  
Q gives him a look filled with pity and Bond thinks that Q sees an idiot before him. “I assume you refer to my distaste for flying? You realize that there is more than one reason to fear flight, do you not?”  
  
“It all boils down to death, in the end,” Bond replies.  
  
“You know I don’t drive, either? That I rarely take a cab and only allow others to drive me in cars during times of necessity? The tube is far safer.”  
  
“Fear of your own mortality,” Bond replies with a dismissive shrug.  
  
“I have met very few people who even approach my intelligence level, even fewer whose areas of interest and expertise mesh with mine. I can, in fact, count them on one hand and four of those work for MI6.”  
  
Bond doesn’t see where this is going, so he doesn’t respond. He considers going and getting some scotch, seeing if it will dull the thudding in his head, but decides that would take effort he doesn’t have to spare when he’s convincing his quartermaster not to subject himself to unnecessary torture. Perhaps if he doesn’t respond, Q will get to the point more quickly and he can toss Q out.  
  
When Bond doesn’t respond for several long beats, Q takes up his monologue again. “When I was of an age for memories to be concrete, but young enough for them to be formative, I knew the remaining individual quite well. I had been removed from primary school by that point and was studying under the supervision of several very advanced tutors. One of them was perhaps the only person who I believe would be able to surpass my own abilities now, as an adult, in a head to head competition. He went on a trip to another country. He flew there. His plane didn’t crash.” This is all stated with a calm that can only come from having recited a story over and over, either to oneself or to others.  
  
Bond is definitely confused now. This story is stupid and has no bearing on the discussion they are currently having. Nothing bad happened, so clearly this is a distraction from the matter at hand. Perhaps it’s a calming technique. If so, then Q is more susceptible to torture than the average MI6 employee, though Bond is impressed at how few identifying details Q has left in the story even in his fear.  
  
“On his way back, the plane hit turbulence whilst the fasten seatbelt sign was off. He’d been standing to retrieve something from the overhead bins and his head hit the top of the cabin very hard. He broke a blood vessel in his brain. By the time they landed, enough damage had been done that he was rendered permanently altered. His mind was no longer his own, his ability to communicate had been impaired catastrophically and his ability to think was so scattered by the dead neurons that he required round-the-clock care. But he remembered being the man he had been, he remembered how his mind had worked and it drove him mad. I cannot face that. I cannot face being rendered insensible and torture is nothing if not the destruction of one’s capability for higher thought. I need to know that I can make it through that with my faculties intact enough not to divulge information.”  
  
It is one of the most specific fears that Bond has ever heard in his life, but by necessity MI6’s quartermaster is always a very singular individual. It is also one of the few fears, he believes, that would increase one’s susceptibility to torture in a way that would make practice torture sensible in the slightest. He still does not like the idea of doing this. “Then remind yourself that pain is temporary and go back to work.”  
  
“That’s not the same thing as experiencing it.”  
  
“I don’t torture children,” Bond tries, going for boredom and knowing it will infuriate Q. He hopes it will make Q go away. He’s pretty sure his hopes are for naught.  
  
A flash of genuine anger and Q squares his jaw furiously, tilting his head in a way that makes him look taller. It makes him look thinner, though, more drawn out and less powerful and Bond doubts he knows that. “Regardless of your ideas of my age, I assure you I am not a child and I am in fact much older than I appear.”  
  
“How old is Michael Hunter?” Bond asks.  
  
“Thirty-five,” comes the quick, confident reply. Q has rehearsed his cover, that much is clear, though Bond isn’t sure how long he’s had it.  
  
It takes Bond by surprise, hearing that age and he raises an eyebrow. “One’s cover should always be within two years’ age of one’s own age. There are basic cultural artifacts that make a falsified age less believable.”  
  
“I’m not ignorant to that. Michael Hunter’s date and year of birth are within six months of the date on which my mother brought me home,” Q says, vaguely irritated in the way he often is when Bond remarks on his age. Old habits really do have a calming effect.  
  
It makes Bond wonder why he chose the date he was brought home. Perhaps Q was adopted and didn’t come home as an infant. Perhaps he was born prematurely. It’s an interesting way to put it, but one that does not, in fact, give away anything. It creates more questions than it answers and means that Q could be significantly older than thirty five. “I see. What else should I know about Mr. Hunter before we proceed?”  
  
Q withdraws a file from the top of his briefcase. “It’s all here, honestly.” The nerves are back in his voice and movements now that Bond has given him hope that this might go forward. He sits, finally, on the edge of a chair at the table as he hands the file over. It’s a move clearly meant to hide the fact that Bond can see him beginning to tremble. Q is scared out of his wits by this scenario.  
  
Bond is more pleased by Q’s fear than he should be, because it indicates to him that Q has not entirely lost his mind. Q is perhaps doing something impulsive and foolish, but he hasn’t gone mad. He still knows what he should fear.  
  
Bond takes the file and begins flipping through it. Michael Charles Hunter, date of birth July 23rd, 1980. Education fairly basic and nondescript, with extracurriculars letting him learn computers and engineering skills that would go on to get him a job in tech support for the government. Single, with a handful of short-term relationships that had been noted on his Facebook profile. Owns a house in Sutton, heavily mortgaged. Two cats, both brown tabbies. Keeps to himself, rarely goes out. Mother dead, father retired in New Zealand, no siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins.  
  
Q struggles very clearly not to fidget as Bond reads through test scores and banking information and other minutiae that makes a rather complete identity out of this cover. There are school photos, a handful of mentions here and there in records from schools and early employers, all accessible by the net as far as Bond can tell.  
  
The medical records are the most interesting, largely because they have to be fairly accurate.  Latex and penicillin allergies, documented in early childhood. Severe astigmatism had left him practically blind for much of his life, without the use of corrective lenses, which he’d worn since toddlerhood. Born prematurely, spending weeks in an incubator with documented time on a ventilator. Mild asthma that had excused him from PE. Diagnosis of carpal tunnel in the left wrist at the age of 21, diagnosis in the right wrist at the age of 24. Endoscopic release of both hands at 28. No other documented health issues other than the typical colds and bumps of life, all the normal jabs recorded at the normal times.  
  
“You know, letting the carpal tunnel into your cover means that they’ll focus more on your hands,” Bond says, conversationally.  
  
Q shrugs, then. “They’ll focus more on my wrists which are more likely to be reparable than my fingers. I’m a computers expert and electronics engineer. I need my fingers for basic function and my work and any torturer has even odds of needing my fingers, too. Any torturer that didn’t need my fingers would almost certainly attack my hands early on as it’s a likely point of leverage for anyone working in technology.”  
  
Bond sees how much thought he’s put into every aspect of this. Q knows exactly what he’s put together and even seems to know exactly what it is he’s asking for. It makes it much harder to find reasons to refuse. Q has reasons to believe he would fail under torture, good reasons. The best way to prove to him that he won’t is to torture him. The consequences if he is ever kidnapped could honestly be devastating for international intelligence—the smart blood alone could destroy them all. “Why me?” is what he asks, finally. “I’ve retired, haven’t I?”  
  
Q clearly can’t shake the jangling of his nerves to make himself look arrogant, can’t draw up the tone to sound superior, but he speaks anyway. “Out of all the double-ohs, you’re the only one who would actually follow through torturing a superior. Dr. Swann leaving you was inevitable and I’ve been monitoring you for her disappearance. She’s safe, if that brings you any comfort. I knew that once she left you, you would either drink yourself to death or return and I thought it prudent to come get this dealt with before you could make a decision on that front.”  
  
Sometimes, Bond forgets just how extensive Q’s ability to monitor the world is. Sometimes, he forgets that Q’s job includes assisting in the planning of missions—his technology being crucial so often, it’s a necessity. Sometimes, he forgets that Q’s brilliance isn’t just the creation of said technology, but also a tactical, logical sort. “You aren’t leaving me with much choice, are you?”  
  
“You’re a double-oh. You know full well that you have the right to refuse any mission, on any grounds.” Q sounds like his mouth has gone dry and he can’t meet Bond’s eyes.  
  
“My mission, should I choose to accept it…” Bond says, sighing. “The choice to accept a mission is never freely given. There are always consequences to the decision not to accept. If there aren’t, then the mission wasn’t ever meant for a double-oh agent in the first place. That’s what we’re for.”  
  
“And this?”  
  
“Is a mission for a double-oh agent.” Bond hates that it is. He doesn’t want to do this. Torture is distasteful, inelegant. It’s not for people he doesn’t need to kill or who don’t need to be punished to within an inch of their lives. Q needs neither of these things and this won’t be punishment. This will be training, and there’s something that doesn’t sit right about that with Bond.  
  
“Then you accept it?”  
  
“Once I’ve had a shower and put on trousers, yes. Torture is best done at one’s best. Would you care for a snack? The room service here is excellent.”  
  
The look Q gives him is disbelieving. “You expect me to eat?”  
  
Bond shrugs. “I will be and it seemed rude not to offer you the opportunity. I don’t work on an empty stomach.” There’s a very large part of him that hopes Q will abandon this if he treats it cavalierly enough. He’s heard the other man’s arguments and is losing hope quickly, but he can still hope.  
  
“Forgive me if I don’t join you.”  
  
“Make yourself at home, then. The torture commences in an hour.” Bond heads for the bathroom.  
  
As he closes the door behind him, he sees Q pull out his phone and start jabbing at it anxiously with one finger. Bond desperately hopes it’s not an SOS. He would hate to have the entirety of MI6 show up and force him to explain himself and he is absolutely positive that Q has not, in fact, told anyone where he is or what he’s doing. This reeks of unsanctioned planning, which is the real reason Q is here.  
  
Cleaning himself up, eating, drinking and painkillers all go a long way towards making Bond feel more human and more capable. He carefully lays out Q’s toys on the table, produces rope from a duffel in the closet—it’s no wonder Madeline left, it’s really not, he only has himself to blame— along with zip ties, produces knives of his own and, finally, he fills the bathtub with cold water. Q watches all of this while pretending he’s not. He pretends to text, but Bond sees him from time to time fiddling with some kind of app that appears to feature poorly drawn cats and no action. Bond sees another game, some kind of puzzle, as he lays the drugs next to their bottles for easy access. Needles would be easier, but he can make do with tablets.  
  
Bond has always had an impeccable sense of time—military life had given him that—and an hour after their conversation, he picks up the rope again and stands before Q. “It’s time,” he says firmly.  
  
Q lays his phone aside, pulling up a very complex passcode screen with dozens of dots that need to be connected in a certain pattern. “Is it?” he asks, a little faintly.  
  
“Unless you’ve changed your mind. If you have, you’re more than welcome to leave this foolishness behind and go home. Once I’ve begun, I won’t quit until I’m satisfied that you can stand up to interrogation, or you shatter.”  
  
“And if I break?”  
  
Bond looks into his eyes for a moment, considering it. He finds himself strongly disliking the idea of suicide capsules for his quartermaster. “Then we practice until you stop breaking or until I know everything there is to know of your true identity, whichever comes first.”  
  
“My true identity no longer exists.”  
  
“Be that as it may. If any of your clothing holds sentimental value, then I suggest that you remove it now. Once I begin, I will do to you whatever seems most appropriate.”  
  
Q swallows hard and removes his cardigan. A shame, since James would have loved to destroy it. It was an insult to his eyes, but he’d said he wouldn’t damage it.  
  
“How accurate is your cover on your visual capabilities?” Bond asks him.  
  
“I believe that I shouldn’t reveal that to my torturer,” Q replies, trying for bold but the words coming out shakily.  
  
“Let me rephrase. How necessary will your glasses be to you getting home when this is finished?”  
  
“Ah. Well, as I left my spares in my hotel room, rather crucial.”  
  
Bond nods. “I may break them, then.” It’s useful to know that Q has a hotel room relatively nearby and the knowledge that he has backup glasses is good. It gives Bond more freedom without actually crippling the man.  
  
Q’s eyes widen as if suddenly realizing that Bond means business. It isn’t that he looked like this might be a game, before that, it’s that he didn’t look like he understood the enormity of what he was asking for, even if he’d built the torture implements himself. He makes no move, however, to place his glasses with his cardigan.  “Are we to begin now, then?”  
  
Bond doesn’t answer him, just lurches forward and grabs the quartermaster’s throat in one hand, squeezing just enough to give the illusion that he’s about to cut off the man’s air. Q kicks out instinctively and Bond is glad. The only thing that could make this worse would be if Q forced himself to take the torture without even trying to fight back. It wouldn’t work, then, because the mind doesn’t work that way.  
  
Bond shoves him back against the wall, squeezing a little harder on his throat as he grabs for one of the tablets on the table. The closeness keeps Q from being able to get the leverage to break free of Bond’s grasp and the hand on his throat brings panic to his face. Bond thinks this will be over quickly as his fingers find the tablet that will leave the quartermaster confused, if the descriptions he’d given were to be trusted. Confusion from the beginning will help make this more real and keep Q from resisting simply because he knows who is with him and why they’re there.  
  
He jams the tablet into Q’s mouth and covers his nose and mouth with one hand, releasing Q’s throat to rub roughly at the man’s adam’s apple as if he were an ill-behaved sick dog. Q resists swallowing, drooling behind Bond’s hand and trying desperately to kick and twist free.  
  
“Swallow or I’ll suffocate you until you pass out and then make you swallow,” Bond hisses.  
  
Q struggles a moment longer, panic filling his face as he fights to breathe. His face is a blotchy red, his eyes watering. Bond has a moment of satisfaction when he gives in and he smiles.  
  
“There’s a good boy,” Bond practically purrs as he lets Q gasp in a few breaths unimpeded. He’s good at what he does and part of the headfuck of torture is the torturer’s enjoyment. Bond may not enjoy it, but he’s good at pretending that he does. He makes himself sound like he’s enjoying it as he drags Q around, binding his hands with zip ties just shy of tightly enough to do damage. He makes himself crow when the drugs start to take effect and Q stumbles rather than moving with him.  
  
When Q’s eyes seem foggy and confused, the sharp intellect dulled by the drugs, Bond turns on the tv and throws a towel over it so Q can’t see it, can only hear extra voices. He puts Q in a chair and ties him to it. He uses a knife to slowly cut off the man’s shirt, using a strip of it as a blindfold.  
  
He finds himself loathe to start with the real pain and he sticks with fear longer than, perhaps, he should. He spins Q around on the chair, making him dizzy. He doesn’t even start demanding anything, not yet. He won’t, not until Q is further gone, more confused and terrified. He won’t start demanding until Q isn’t sure anymore which way is up.  
  
He tips the chair onto its back, pries Q’s mouth open and pours an entire bottle of water into it as fast as he can, liberally getting it up Q’s nose. Q gags and splutters and coughs and if it were anyone else, anyone that Bond could get valuable information out of, Bond would feel a sort of satisfaction.  
  
All he feels is irritated.  
  
He starts tracing the blunt side of his own knives across Q’s chest, barely scratching him with the tip, creating anticipation. Q goes stiff and quiet. Bond leans in to whisper in his ear. “I’m going to hear you scream, sooner or later, and no one’s going to come stop me. You might as well just give up, you’re never going to last long enough to keep our country safe.”  
  
Q swallows, but shakes his head. He’s trembling under James’ blade. His jaw is clenched tightly and he’s breathing shallowly through his nose. James considers this a moment, weighs the likelihood of repercussions, then punches Q in the face, hard, his fist colliding with Q’s jaw and turning Q’s head abruptly to the left. It’s going to leave a bruise and Bond is sure that M is going to have his head on a platter once MI6 finds out about this, but he’s had worse.  
  
Q cries out at the impact, in shock, pain and confusion. It twists in Bond’s chest, like hurting an animal for no reason. He punches Q again, turning his face the other way. At least the bruises will be symmetrical.  
He gets the not-knife and gently drags its tip across Q’s stomach. Q screams, not just a yelp, a proper scream. He clearly doesn’t like pain. That’s okay, Bond hates causing him pain. He drags the not-knife from Q’s navel to his sternum, moving slowly and Q keeps screaming. It makes every muscle in Bond’s neck and shoulders tense.  
  
He keeps going, making Q scream. He draws blood with the razor while Q wails and starts begging him to stop. The begging hurts, so Bond keeps going. He rubs salt into the wounds before he stands back, watching Q writhe.  
  
“Tell me your name,” Bond demands.  
  
“Michael Hunter,” Q wails.  
  
Bond unties Q and picks him up, bridal style. Q thrashes and Bond shakes him until he stops thrashing. He carries Q into the bathroom and dumps him into the tub. Q shrieks, kicking his legs into the wall and the faucet.  
  
“Your real name,” Bond demands, then dunks Q underwater. Bubbles come up as Q screams and struggles. Bond pulls him up before he can inhale.  
  
“Michael Hunter!”  
  
Bond dunks him a dozen more times, the water turning red with Q’s blood as the razor wounds bleed. Bond rips the blindfold off of Q’s face and Q’s eyes widen in horror when he sees the water. He screams. “You’re not supposed to be killing me! Get away!”  
  
Well, that answers the question of whether or not Q has a death wish. Bond dunks him over and over and Q just keeps screaming. Bond wonders how good the soundproofing is and hopes that no one comes in to see what’s going on. He picks Q up again and deposits him on the floor of the other room without ceremony. Q breathes deeply a few times and Bond feels relieved.  
  
He dumps the mild acid—it smells like lemon juice, not some Q-branch strangeness—onto Q’s cut flesh. Q screams again and Bond keeps demanding, over and over for Q’s real name. Q doesn’t give it up and Bond feels a little stab of pride. Q is doing better than Bond expected, in spite of the screaming, so Bond clamps one of the tiny clamps onto Q’s right index finger.  
  
Q shrieks. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, my hand oh god!” Bond makes out through the shrieking.  
  
“I’ll give you another if you don’t tell me who you are!”  
  
“Michael Hunter!” Q screams.  
  
“Where do you work?” Bond demands.  
  
“Tech support!”  
  
“That’s a cover, tell me where you really work and I’ll make the pain stop.”  
  
“Tech support!” Q shouts again and again while Bond keeps upping the pain, rubbing salt into the wounds and then slowly not-stabbing Q with the not-knife.  
  
If it were a real knife, Q would be dying slowly, Bond realizes with a start, but as it stands, this can go on forever. These toys would be useful in the field. He wishes this were the field and that this wasn’t his quartermaster as he rips down the waistband of the quartermaster’s trousers and pulls the not-lighter out to burn Q just where the rough hair begins on his lower belly.  
  
Q starts crying then, actually sobbing. Bond wants it to stop and has to remind himself that no, this isn’t someone whose crying he can stop. It just has to go on and on.  
  
He alternates the burning and the stabbing while Q cries so hard he can’t even speak. He applies the clamps to each of Q’s fingers, slowly, one finger at a time and each one results in incoherent sounds that have a begging tone. It’s so much pain and the quartermaster screams. He isn’t built for this, people aren’t supposed to hurt this man, not like this. Bond respects Q and this makes him feel a little sick.  
  
He gives Q a break, sitting next to his head and waiting for the sobbing to trail off. It does, finally and Bond feels such relief. He crumbles the sensitivity pill into a bottle of water.  
  
“Is it over, then?” Q asks, hoarsely.  
  
Bond sits him up a little, holding the bottle of water to his lips. Q drinks greedily, turning his face and blinking myopically at Bond’s face.  
  
“It can be, if you want,” Bond says, finally.  
  
“Oh thank god. I can’t do it anymore,” Q whispers.  
  
“Good. Then tell me your name.”  
  
Q’s breath catches. “You said it was over.”  
  
“Not until you tell me your name,” Bond says.  
  
“I’m done! I’m done, this is over, I resisted,” Q says, his tone going small and dead.  
  
“You’re not done until I break you or you can’t be broken.”  
  
“Haven’t you proved that yet?” Q asks. His pupils are blown and he’s panting, panic flooding back into his face. He tries to push away from Bond, but he’s weak and trembling and it’s entirely ineffectual.  
  
Bond slowly drags his fingernails down Q’s arm and realizes how fast-acting the second drug is when Q pulls away as if burnt.  
  
“What have you done to me? What have you done?” he demands.  
  
“You did it to yourself. Where were you when you made that drug?” Bond rakes his fingernails through Q’s hair.  
  
Q starts crying again, great ugly sobs of agony. “I don’t make drugs! I don’t, oh god, no one should have ever done that!”  
  
“Tell me what you know about the drugs. Tell me something, anything, and I’ll let you lay perfectly still and wait for this to stop.”  
  
“No!”  
  
Bond keeps up the torture, dragging sharp objects over Q’s over-sensitized skin, dragging him along the carpet. He steps out to the ice machine, giving Q an all-too-brief breather.  
  
The ice cubes make Q scream in a new way when Bond drops them one at a time and so Bond dumps the entire bucket on him to see what that does, feeling like he's stepped outside of himself a moment. There’s a brief shriek and then Q goes still and quiet. Bond worries that Q is seriously injured. Maybe the ice was too much and it’s sent him into shock. He plucks Q up off the floor and brushes the ice off with his bare hand, then pulls Q in against him. From the way Q’s breathing, it’s agony, but he doesn’t make a sound over his harsh rasping breath.  
  
“What’s your name?” Bond asks.  
  
There’s no response for a moment and Bond feels his heart stutter as Q releases a long breath and sags in his arms a little. Untested drugs, no doubt, and he’s killed the quartermaster, but then Q inhales again. “It doesn’t matter,” Q finally says softly, so softly that Bond can barely hear him.  
  
“Your name,” Bond grits.  
  
“This is never going to stop,” Q whispers. “It’s never going to stop, it doesn’t matter what I say or do. I unleashed a monster and you like this, you love this and you’re never going to stop. I can’t stop you, you’re never going to stop. You were made for this and you’ll never stop.” There’s an edge of hysteria, but the words strike Bond’s heart in a way that leaves him feeling utterly gutted. The quartermaster’s seen what he is and told him and it’s everything that Bond has ever feared.  
  
He lays a soft sheet from the bed out on the floor and lays Q gently, so gently, on it to let the drugs out of his system. He’s so gentle, so careful. He tries so hard not to be a monster as he carefully removes the clamps and bandages the shallow cuts on Q’s torso. Every touch is agony, Bond knows, and yes, that’s guilt, that’s empathy.  
  
He should have sent Q back to Psych, should have walked him back himself. Instead he waits for the drugs to leave Q’s system and stays silent. When finally Q begins to relax, his breaths evening out, Bond carefully slides Q’s glasses onto his face and gently sits him up.  
  
Q doesn’t ask if it’s over.  
  
Bond tells him it is, in a gentle tone he scarcely recognizes from himself. “You passed. You broke the right way,” he says, carefully washing Q’s face and neck with a damp cloth.  
  
“There’s a right way?” Q asks, blinking at Bond with large, frightened eyes. His hair is lank, stringy, clinging to his scalp. He looks terrible.  
  
Bond nods. “When you give up. They can’t beat you when you give up and give in and accept that you’ve lost.”  
Q clearly doesn’t understand.  
  
Bond sighs. “You realized the secret. When someone tortures you, you don’t hold the cards. Only a monster will agree to torture. And when a monster’s got you, it doesn’t matter if you cooperate. Even if you give them everything, the torture won’t stop, so there’s no point in it, no point in helping them.”  
  
“That’s not what they said in the classes…” Q still looks confused.  
  
“No. They try to teach you how not to break. But the secret is that everyone breaks. You broke the right way.” Bond broke him the right way. He had concentrated everything on breaking Q and it had shown Bond the most important thing. He himself is broken.  
  
Q looks at him and Bond thinks he sees fear, true fear. When Bond goes back to MI6 to take his punishment--and it drags on and on--he thinks that he can see that fear in Q every time they meet.  
  
It’s no wonder Madeline left. Bond brings it on himself.


End file.
